Often large passenger mobile platforms, such as aircraft, buses and trains travel long distances and many hours without stopping. As hours pass, this can sometimes place passengers under stress and discomfort. To address this, many mobile platforms have attempted to provide a measure of comfort by providing seats with additional padding and extended angles of reclination, and ample room for body movement without disturbing other passengers. However, these known methods of addressing passenger comfort and rest only minimally reduce passenger discomfort, often do not provide privacy and do not allow sufficient space for uninhibited freedom of movement.
Furthermore, when a passenger is traveling within a mobile platform for an extended period of time, the passenger needs some place to go, i.e. a destination or location within the mobile platform itself. To relieve the psychological and physical stress of long term travel, the passenger needs to get away from his or her seat and go some place else. To address this need of passenger for a separate space, away from their seat, some mobile platforms have incorporated lounges within the passenger cabin. Other mobile platforms have provided sleeping berths in an overhead area above the passenger cabin. However, both of these known methods typically require the area of many seats and therefore consume a considerable amount of the seating capacity within the passenger cabin. Additionally, known overhead resting accommodations typically include a single overhead structure having a plurality of berths accessible from a single aisle extending the entire longitudinal length of the overhead structure. These known overhead resting structures are generally only accessible by a single stairway at one end of the aisle or by a pair stairways located at the aft and forward ends of the aisle. This, at best, provides only minimal privacy as each passenger must traverse the aisle, passing by other berths which may be occupied, to reach an unoccupied berth.
Furthermore, these known methods of addressing passenger comfort and rest do not enhance a ‘nesting’ instinct of passengers where it is psychologically soothing and relaxing to have personal spaces, i.e. the passenger's seat and the resting accommodations, psychologically connected and in close proximity to one another,
Therefore, it would be desirable to provide passengers traveling for extended periods on a mobile platform with private resting quarters that provide sufficient room to comfortably repose, are associated with their seats and minimizing the loss of seating capacity in the passenger cabin.